Bring Me to Life
by bandgeek9
Summary: Ulquiorra's soul briefly comes to visit Ichigo in order to get the answers he wants before his spirit is reincarnated. Based loosely on the song Bring Me to Life by Evanescence. NOT YAOI.


The Kurosaki clinic lay still in the silence of the Winter War's aftermath. For the first time in months, Ichigo lay on his own bed in his own body, listening to the whistling and snapping of the branches outside his window in the chill evening. Aizen was dead at his own hands. Ichimaru would soon stand trial for the crime of high treason and would most likely face the death penalty by Sokyoku. The wind gradually faded from a whistling to a soft, low moan. Ichigo's ears weren't deaf to the change in frequencies, nor to the fact that the moan sounded almost… human. Human and familiar, yet something that he couldn't quite place a finger on. That voice…

The "voice" had seemly become weary of waiting for Ichigo to realize the familiarity of its sound. When it made itself known, Ichigo found the unmistakable presence of the Cuatra Espada, Ulquiorra Cifer in the room with him. He did not jump in surprise or fear, or even shift his position on the bed. It wasn't a reanimated corpse he was seeing, or a hallucination or even a ghost. Merely the presence of his soul, but he could still see that black hair and those luminous green eyes as clearly as in the living copy. In his mind he was not shocked or afraid, because in his heart he had been expecting it. The fight wasn't over- had never been over. Perhaps this was to be considered closure.

Ulquiorra sat leaning against a wall, clearly expecting the insolent human boy to talk up a storm. The storm didn't come however, and had he cared more, he would have been awed at the fact that Ichigo was capable of remaining silent for once in his fifteen years. "You ask no questions…" he quietly observed. "Does this mean you know why I have taken the pains to find this place?" he asked, staring pensively into Ichigo's face, his eyes walls of glass that blocked out anything he might have been feeling. Ichigo closed his own eyes, choosing his words with caution. "I do think I know why you're here," the teen said carefully. "You want to know why I ended the fight before it was done. Why I killed you. That's why you're here, isn't it? For revenge?" He guessed. What other possible reason could there be for the soul of Ulquiorra Cifer to appear in his bed room in the middle of the night?

Ulquiorra turned his head away, now looking at the other man out of his peripheral vision. He let exasperation leak out of the glassy barriers of his emerald eyes and into his tone of voice. "You think I have come to haunt you, Kurosaki, like some ridiculous human superstition?" Ulquiorra asked, rather incredulous at the younger man's density. "I do not waste my time with trash," he couldn't resist adding. Ichigo glared and opened his mouth to protest, but the raven haired man sent daggers at him with his eyes. "Do not interrupt. I have come here for answers, and as I have said, I will not allow you to waste my time with foolishness." Ulquiorra finished his statement with an air of finality, as if expecting complete obedience.

Ichigo finally managed to get a word in edgewise. By this time he was thoroughly annoyed. "Fine, Mr. High-And-Mighty, I'll let you talk. But damn it, it's my house and my rules. What time do you have to waste anyway? You're _dead,_ for crying out loud!" he said, glowering all the while. Ulquiorra looked down at his knees. "Just another soul waiting to be reincarnated…" he murmured. "I do not have much time left…" Hearing Ulquiorra's voice take such a lost tone, Ichigo suddenly felt a pang of guilt. It was his fault, his fault that the arrancar's life had ended the way it did. What right did he have to talk to the man like that? As if he were reading his thoughts, Ulquiorra looked up from his position on the floor and stared Ichigo in the eyes. "You were supposed to kill me. I asked you to. Why didn't you?" he asked the teen with none of the malice of before. Instead the was some other emotion in his voice and eyes. Pleading? Sorrow? Pain? He looked utterly hopeless in a way that Ichigo had never seen him before. It was making him feel rather uncomfortable. He squirmed a little bit, trying to override his guilt, but to no avail. Then something Ulquiorra had said hit him. "Wait. What do you mean I didn't kill you? You died from the wounds my Hollow inflicted on you. I saw you disintegrate! If that's not killing, I don't know what is. Don't tell me you _wanted_ me to cut you down!" Ichigo said disbelievingly. All of a sudden, the memories all came rushing back to him.

_A shocked expression crossed Ulquiorra's pale face, bordering on panic. The damage was too great. He would never be able to regenerate after Ichigo's attack had wiped out nearly his entire lower half. His vital organs could not continue to function… it was over. He been defeated by a lowly human- a disgrace. But the look passed quickly as he accepted the fact that he was going to die in a mere few minutes and was dissolving even as he thought these things. "Hmph," he said calmly. "I guess that's it for me." Ichigo could only stand frozen with the same shocked expression on his face that his enemy had been wearing moments ago. "Kill me," Ulquiorra commanded, startling him even further. "Hurry… I don't even have the strength left to walk. If you don't kill me now, it will never be over." His face deadpanned, but his voice was pleading, begging Ichigo to settle the fight once and for all. To give him closure. All he wanted now was to end it. But Ichigo's face set into a stubborn scowl. "No," he said. Ulquiorra could not believe what he was hearing. "What?" he demanded, using up some of his remaining breath. Was the Kurosaki boy not going to claim the victory as his? And more importantly than that, he had refused Ulquiorra his last request. This was how it was meant to end, him dying by Kurosaki's sword in battle. Ichigo broke down, his tears threatening to overflow. "This…" he tried, his voice breaking. "THIS ISN'T THE WAY I WANTED TO WIN!" Ichigo screamed. Ulquiorra looked at him with something close to real emotion, a combination of sorrow and annoyance. "Hmph," he said again. "Even in the end… You never do what I want." His huge, bat-like wings were nearly completely disintegrated. "And here I was… Finally starting to take an interest in all of you." As his torso began to disappear, Ulquiorra reached out to Orihime in his last attempt to understand. "Do I frighten you… woman?" he asked, not allowing his desperation and genuine fear show on his face. Orihime didn't attempt to hide her tears. "No, you don't," she choked in a broken whisper. He gazed back at her silently. "I see," he acknowledged simply. She reached forward to grasp his outstretched hand, but it was too late. He was already gone, reduced to ashes, his remains riding on the wind._

Ichigo looked up again at the slender form of the ghost, or soul, or whatever it was. His amber eyes pricked with tears. "You wanted me to kill you… You told me to cut you down." Why the request had been so vital to Ulquiorra, Ichigo could not guess, but now he saw the sort of meaning it had had to the pale arrancar, who in the meantime had resumed glaring now that he saw the clueless teenager beginning to understand. However, he knew that he needed to speak quickly, because reincarnation was an unpredictable thing, as he knew too well. "I have lived many lives," Ulquiorra began softly. "I have been reincarnated far too many times. Each death ends in the same meaningless, obscure way, and I remember each one. They begin to blur together, the lives. Perhaps you have guessed why my aspect of death is nihilism. Life has lost its meaning for me, if it ever had one to begin with." the dark haired man ran his fingers lightly from below his eyes to the bottom of his chin, fingering the teal tear track marks. He let out a small, sad sigh before continuing. "You don't know, could never possibly understand, what it is like to remember your every death, and far more importantly, your every life. The same thing repeated again and again: an endless, dizzying cycle. All without any sense of finality or significance in any way. Always ending with the knowledge that I will be reincarnated yet again and be forced to start from scratch. And the heart… that ever torturing heart that I long for the meaning of but cannot ever reach. It slips out of my fingers each and every time, leaving me in the dark yet again. I have never been closer to discovering it as I was after that last battle…" Ulquiorra said, his voice nearly a whisper. "I saw it in my very hand, but in the end, it was truly only taunting me like it always has been. You humans speak of hearts and souls, but what are those things? You claim it provides meaning in your lives to have a heart. Perhaps it is the ability to feel that increases the depth of it all. But I am hollow. And whatever form I take, I will always be hollow. Did some unnamed spirit or deity design me to be this way? Without purpose, redundant? What is my life- do I even have a life? This constantly repeating cycle could hardly be considered one. Never stopping or pausing… it always continues to move me from life to life and I can never escape." All was silent after this speech for what seemed like an eternity. Then with incredible alarm Ichigo realized that Ulquiorra was crying. The raven haired man's sobs rose in volume until it was almost unbearable- heartbreaking, like lost child. Ichigo had seen the pale man lose face all but one time, but never crying like this. Despite the ever-present tear track marks, he could never bring himself to imagine that perfectly blank, emotionless face crumpled in grief and bathed in tears. All he could do at the moment was look on helplessly. In a lame attempt to comfort, Ichigo approached the smaller man and placed his hand gently on his shoulder- only to have it swatted away with surprising strength for a soul. "Don't you understand, trash?" Ulquiorra whispered hoarsely. His vivid green eyes were brimming with venom and resentment for the other man. "You were my last chance to escape the cycle. That last sense of finality that would have come from you ending my life would have at last put this mind to rest- I could have continued with the reincarnation without suffering to recall all my lives before. My existence would have perhaps returned to meaning, if that is possible; and perhaps I could even have found the true meaning of the heart." Ulquiorra finished in silence again, and then the soul struggled to his feet without any of the strength of the self confident Espada he had once been. Ichigo watched wordlessly as Ulquiorra's paper white face gradually returned to its original stoic state with the vast sorrow barely showing behind his eyes. Ulquiorra calmly wiped the sides of his face with the long white sleeve that he was still wearing, and stated simply, "The cycle continues." And with that, he quietly faded out and was gone from Ichigo's life forever.

_Fin._

* * *

_Wake me up inside  
Wake me up inside  
Call my name and save me from the dark.  
Bid my blood to run  
Before I come undone  
Save me from the nothing I've become._  
~Bring Me to Life by Evanescence

**A/N: First let me say that I did not intend this to be Ichigo X Ulquiorra. Now that's out of the way, let me explain.**

Contrary to what you probably thought after reading some of my fanfics, I actually love writing angst. I can't get enough of it. The darker it is, the better. The only reason I write crack fic is for comic relief, to be honest. And yes, I know that I REALLY need to update Bleach: The Brotherhood. DON'T KILL ME!

This story was partly inspired by a video I watched that provided arguments that Ulquiorra could still be alive. This video, to be specific: http://www(dot)youtube(dot)com(slash)watch?v=3RfDohNkqaU&feature=related

Now all of you, GO WATCH IT!


End file.
